Happy Thanksgiving!!

I've had such a full morning already! 

Sausage balls and coffee to start the day; the bird is in the oven (fingers crossed! kinda nervous!). 

Kevin is on the roof putting up Christmas lights - it's cool and foggy outside and the cats are watching us from the window. 

When I go out to hand him a tool and come back in the house it smells WONDERFUL!! I've missed that turkey smell on Thanksgiving.

Have a great Thanksgiving day everyone!

One of the place setting with Fiestaweare and vintage linen napkins.

Centerpiece with some of the gorgeous roses from our backyard.

Sausage balls to fuel the morning

The glorious bird! Pictured after one hour of roasting.

The cats watching us from the window ...

Thanksgiving 2011

As I mentioned previously, I am doing my own Thanksgiving 'spread' this year ... all by my self.

This is kind of a big deal.

Every Thanksgiving (and Christmas) since we got married Kevin and I have spent with other people - either friends or his family - so I've just made sweet potatoes or apple pie or something. This year I have a turkey and a ham (Honey Baked of course) and I'm making several sides (I hesitate to call them "vegetables" since they are really so far departed from, for example, steamed broccoli).

Here is my menu:

- Roast Turkey (this makes me nervous)

- Pan Gravy (this also makes me nervous)

- Spiral Cut Ham

- Sweet Potato Casserole (tried and true recipe - delicious!)

- Mashed Potatoes

- Parker House Rolls (a first for me but the recipe looks easy)

- Green Bean Casserole (I have tried and loved more foodie variants but I'm going old-school this year)

- Cornbread Sage Dressing

- Lime Jello Salad (there is just something magical about having this on my plate during the holidays, no lie)

- Cranberry Sauce (yes, from the can; jellied and whole fruit)

So turkey and pan gravy officially make me nervous. I have never made them before. I'm kind of scared. But I'm staying positive!

*I will make a delicious turkey*

*my gravy will not be lumpy*

Part of me kind of wishes we had people coming over, but this year - another first - it's just going to be me and Kevin. I love sharing my cooking with people but sometimes I get so tired of sharing the holidays with family. Does that sound awful?? I know everyone says that is the point of the holidays but when family is nuts and it's just more of a stress and a duty to spend time with them, sometimes it's a nice, well-deserved break to just spend a holiday with your favorite person ever and some pretty awesome food (actually I'm not 100% assured of 'awesome').

Small sidenote: I love Thanksgiving and I appreciate this country but ... I kind of think about these people at Thanksgiving.

What's kind of silly (and always a disappointment for me) is that I have this image in my head of what holidays should be - always have since I was tiny - but they have yet to fully live up to those expectations. That's why expectations are generally to be avoided, I've learned.

Anyway, I have this rose-colored vision of Thanksgiving that entails me getting up early to put the bird in the oven, brew a pot of coffee and put the sausage balls in the oven, turning on the parade and hanging out in my living room with my husband and us laughing and sharing the morning and 'making memories'. I think though that 'making memories' is a little overrated because I'm always making experiences ... sometimes I just don't remember them. Which is why I try living *right now*, in the moment instead of looking back so much.

I love looking back and reminiscing but there is something kind of sad and almost desperate about that. It just makes me a little down. So I try hard to just stay right now instead ... so I can work on making the very most of right now instead of wasting it on being nostalgic. There is no rewind button.

So instead of making up images of what life should be and then being being disappointed, I'm going to appreciate life for what it is.

This year I'm so grateful for ...

- My Husband and Best Friend

- Our Home

- Our sweet cats who are crazy but we love them

- My stable job and the fact that I like all the people I work for (what?! is that even possible?)

- Learning a lot of new things

- Having an open mind

- Old Friends

What are you grateful for this Thanksgiving??

Dinner Last Night

I really can't believe it's August.

This year has passed by pretty quickly, but has been full - we've been busy and have traveled and hosted parties and dinners and overnight guests. One of the things I like about having an extra room or two is being able to provide a place for out of town guests (or Kevin's grandma, even though she lives just 30 minutes away). My house is far from finished or attractive or stylish at this point. I am starting to feel like I should just give up because all my efforts seem lost and when I do make an update or a change, I don't like it so I feel like it was all a waste.

I don't like the blue paint in my kitchen, the rest of my house is still unpainted (meaning it's still the boring white and tan it was when we moved in over a year ago) and my 'decor' feels cluttered and entirely too 'lived in'. Of course we live here; we can't help it. But surely I can keep those piles of 'Martha Stewart' and 'Better Homes' OFF the floor and in a cute basket or something? I need design help, that is a fact.

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to vent about my desigh woes, though this is as good a place as any to do so. I wanted to post some pictures of our dinner last night. It's been a long time since I've posted anything about food (I have quietly skipped any coverage of my birthday party for so many disasterous reasons) and I thought I would share this dinner since it was sort of new (the salad part) and really good. I'd make it again, with minor tweaks to the salad which I will mention later.

Turkey with Greens and Beet Salad

I started by pan-searing/grilling/whatever some turkey cutlets. I just sprinkled some sea salt, cracked pepper and some parsley on each side as it was cooking in a tiny bit of olive oil and and even tinier bit of butter. I'm trying not to use butter and other fats since I'm dieting but the oil was splattering a little too much so I added just a pat of butter to tame it. It won't take too long to cook these but just make sure they are cooked all the way through - this is poultry we're talking about.

While these were cooking I coarsely chopped up one bunch of collard greens. They are so cheap right now (no more than $1 per bunch depending on the store - we found some for $.89 at Minyard last week) and so good for you. They are coming into season along with a bunch of other greens like spinach so it's the perfect time to add them at every possible opportunity. I just set this in a large high-sided skillet ... don't start cooking them til everything else is done because the only need a few minutes to wilt.

Once everything else is done, turn the heat on the greens and let them wilt til they are cooked to your preference. I like leaving mine still bright green and crisp. Jurt turn them a few times to make sure it's cooked evenly. No seasoning needed because they are amazing on their own! But we sometimes squeeze some fresh lemon juice over the top.

I was trying to think of a salad I could make that was different from the usual. I typically make salad with lettuce and cabbage and mix in a bunch of chopped or grated veggies with a homemade vinaigrette. I'm not sure how I got 'beets' in my head but I browsed the web for some ideas and then blended a few of them to come up with my end result which was actually pretty good. Kevin said he liked it, too but maybe he was just being nice. ;)

I mixed 2 cans of beets (I am so aware of how inferior these are to fresh, oven roasted beets but I didn't have time for that), about 1/3 lb of fresh, pitted cherries, halved, 1 segmented orange and 1/2 an apple, very thinly sliced. For the dressing, I combined 1/3 a can's worth of the beet juice I had reserved, about 1 T olive oil, 2 T red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Then I decided it needed a different texture - something crunchy. I thought some nuts would be nice and toasted a couple handfuls of coarsely-chopped almonds. I added these at the very end (actually I completely forgot about them and Kevin added them for me).

Overall, it turned out great. I love turkey and I would like to use it more often and the cutlets are a nice way to do that. I think people use it primarily as a 'replacement' for ground meat but as a stand alone flavor, it's excellent and NOT just for Thanksgiving!